gmc_nxtman wrote:Just curious, is there any particular reason why LtL has a base step of 10 relative to the other algorithms?

Only to match QuickLife's default base step. QuickLife and LtL are the only non-hashlife-based algorithms -- the latter all use a default base step of 8. You can change the default base step for each algo via Prefs > Control.

Here's a range 2 rule which has a number of dirty replicators, lots of ships, a few small still life and a very common sparky oscillator. Most things travel at 3c/4 (where c is 2cells/gen). This small pattern shows the dynamics nicely.

Golly seems to handle this fairly well until the pattern hits the left boundary. The top and bottom boundaries don't seem to be as bad. I understand that if the boundary conditions are toroidal, then suddenly the whole universe is calculated, but is this also happening with planar boundary conditions?

The latest version of the 5S Project contains over 226,000 spaceships. There is also a GitHub mirror of the collection. Tabulated pages up to period 160 (out of date) are available on the LifeWiki.

wildmyron wrote:Golly seems to handle this fairly well until the pattern hits the left boundary. The top and bottom boundaries don't seem to be as bad. I understand that if the boundary conditions are toroidal, then suddenly the whole universe is calculated, but is this also happening with planar boundary conditions?

Hmm, it shouldn't, but it's definitely slower than it should be. I'm probably doing something stupid so I'll try and fix that for the final 3.0 release (probably many weeks away!).

Cool! I think c should still mean one cell per generation, otherwise, it gets kind of ridiculous. THis rule, which is just a three state modification of Wildmyron's rule, has a 3c/2, a c/2, and a c/8 diagonal, weirdly.

In Golly 3.0b1, open one of these patterns, go to Control > Set Rule, click the Help button if necessary, and read the help.

muzik wrote:- Will Golly and/or LifeViewer ever be able to simulate non-totalistic LTL, Generations LTL and MAP LTL, or any weird scary combination of these?

It's a little hard to imagine. Even with a range of 2, the non-totalistic MAP string would be over 4 megabytes of data. For a range of 3 the MAP string would be over seven terabytes (2^49 bits) -- and the range can go up to 50.

...so we can have spaceships that travel at the speed of 50c in Golly?

Only if someone can figure out how to make one.

If you have a Larger Than Life rule that says "turn on a cell that's 50 cells away from the nearest ON cell", what you mostly get is a huge warp-speed explosion traveling at 50c in all directions -- not a nicely contained spaceship.

I'm fairly sure there's a 2c spaceship, at least, down there in the Reasonable Zone of rules with single-digit ranges, but offhand I don't know how to go about designing one or finding one, without writing a whole new apgsearch or lifesrc.

dvgrn wrote:I'm fairly sure there's a 2c spaceship, at least, down there in the Reasonable Zone of rules with single-digit ranges, but offhand I don't know how to go about designing one or finding one, without writing a whole new apgsearch or lifesrc.

dvgrn wrote:I'm fairly sure there's a 2c spaceship, at least, down there in the Reasonable Zone of rules with single-digit ranges, but offhand I don't know how to go about designing one or finding one, without writing a whole new apgsearch or lifesrc.

Wouldn't an appropriately modified gsearch make more sense?

Sure -- a testing a brute-force enumeration for each possible rule is probably less of a headache than trying to adapt any of the other spaceship search utilities to work in a rule where half of the unquestioned assumptions (about "spooky action at a distance", so to speak) suddenly don't apply.

With that method you'll only find spaceships if there are reasonably small ones, though, right? With an "appropriately modified" (read: pretty much rewritten from scratch) apgsearch or lifesrc you'd have a chance at finding bigger ships.

Another topic: I spent a little time hunting for prior art for faster-than-light Larger Than Life spaceships. No luck so far, though there's a nice P1 lightspeed ship in the second pattern below.

Also, in the next release, is it possible to add stuff like instead of S4..7,B5..7 with continuous 5-7, add is so you can specify other births, like S2,7,13,B2,5,10,15? That would really make finding cool rules easier.

Wildmyron and I manage the 5S project, which collects all known spaceship speeds in Isotropic Non-totalistic rules.